Friday, 29 June 2007

Zimbabwe Internet after ZANU PF

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Zimbabwe Internet during ZANU and Mugabe
If you search on Google.com using the words “Mugabe” or “Robert Mugabe” or “ZANU”, you will get not less than 2,500,000 web pages as results. There is a lot said about these three phrases by .CO.ZW, .CO.ZA and .COM websites, as the nation goes through transformation into an economic powerhouse. Day after day, emails, web links, pictures, slideshows, jokes, forums, chats, instant messages, electronic magazines, Newsletters, Newspaper Articles, photos, graphics, and other files are moved from on email box to another, from one continent to another, and from one website to another. Stories are created, cartoons are drawn and posted. Some true, some fabricated. There is a hive of “all” opinions on the subject matter.

Zimbabwe Urikuendepi: Where are you going?
Without being political, my focus would be on the motives, the business, and the going concern of the News, Debates, Books, Publicity, Campaigns, Thesis, and Related Information, now and afterwards. Nothing lasts forever except the Maker of Eternity. There will come a time when ZANU, Mugabe, and everything associated will no longer be viable information to publish or even consume on the Internet. What then will these .CO.ZW, .CO.ZA or .COMs do? Where will they generate their revenue from adverts or even hits from visitors? It is interesting at present as the stories, rather news, is juicy for publication. But there seems to be one song being sung by almost everyone. When I crawl on the Internet about Zimbabwe, I often ask myself what a foreigner would say; “Is everything in Zimbabwe about Mugabe?” Zimbabwean Independent Media, internet included, is running a risk of chasing foreign web consumers away, painting a wrong image of the nation, and archiving a minute portion of our history. Look at Malawi. Their worst years are over and they are focusing on rebuilding. What would have happened had they put their media focus on archiving vision, hope, prosperity, and profiling every opportunity available to the foreign investor? They are currently one of the beggars at IMF and World Banks does, only because of Media foolishness.

Zimbabwe Internet Hope, for the Foolish!
Instead of shooting yourselves in the legs, as a community and people, why don’t you start archiving news that brings hope to the Zimbabwean Consumer, Citizen, and Foreign Investor, creating hype, just as you are doing with the Mugabe issue? To all the Websites, Emailers, and Forums that talk about “Mugabe” or “ZANU”, I challenge you to grow up and become more visionary than what you currently are. It is good that someone changed things for us, causing some to cry out “Who Moved My Cheese?” so that we can be very creative offline, and online too. We now need to start refocusing our efforts to productive content, lest we become another Malawi, though having the best Infrastructure Online in Southern Africa, yes even better than South Africa.

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